TypeScript vs CoffeeScript: Which One To Choose For Writing Better JavaScript

JavaScript, the object scripting language is one of the most widely used languages. According to this survey, JavaScript clinched the #1 position as the top language in 2018. Both languages, TypeScript and CoffeeScript are relatable to the dynamic JavaScript language and have been gaining popularity in an exponential way in the developing world. In this article, we will discuss and compare these two languages and what lies in between them.

TypeScript, an open source programming language developed by Microsoft is one of the fastest growing languages, placed 7 among the top 10 languages. Introduced in 2012, the language can be called from JavaScript by using the existing JavaScript code and incorporating the popular JS libraries. The language contains almost everything from JavaScript along with the additional functionalities such as the enumeration type. It contains all the floating values like those of JS and also supports binary and octal literals along with the hexadecimal and decimal literals.

“CoffeeScript is a little language that compiles into JavaScript” as mentioned in the official documentation, means it is relatively a small programming language than JavaScript. The documentation also says that the golden rule of this language is “It’s just JavaScript.” Though the evolvement and syntax of this language are inspired by the languages Python and Ruby, it can be fair enough to call this language as the enhanced version of JavaScript as one can write code into CoffeeScript and then later transpile into JavaScript. The language also provides tools which are similar to Ruby and Python languages.

Comparison

The syntax of CoffeeScript is mostly similar to JS while TypeScript supports various features in the standard for JS i.e. ECMAScript. There are a few differences between these two languages which are being discussed below.

Capabilities

In terms of capabilities, both languages have high object-oriented capabilities. But the language TypeScript is a strictly typed programming language, while the other is a dynamic type programming language.

Use Of Interfaces

CoffeeScript has low support for the use of interfaces while Typescript has high support for the use of interfaces.

Web Applications

TypeScript can be used for both server-side and client-side web applications while CoffeeScript can be used for server-side.

Related To JavaScript

The high-level programming language, TypeScript is the superset of JavaScript while CoffeeScript is a simplified version of JavaScript. There are always chances to get syntax errors as sometimes the JavaScript interpreter can get confused with the “with statement”.

Compatibility

TypeScript language is supported by almost all browsers while CoffeeScript supports contents in the browsers by depending upon the specific functionalities.

Function declaration

Declaring a function in TypeScript is similar to JavaScript function declaration but in case of CoffeeScript, the function declaration is a little different and it can be done with a single line of code.

For example: square = (x) -> x * x is a one liner for a function that returns the square of a number.

Other Languages

The syntax CoffeeScript is inspired by Ruby and Python and thus it implements several features from these two languages. TypeScript lacks these features.

Community

TypeScript is among the 10 top languages overtime which simply proves that this language has a larger community than the community of CoffeeScript language.

Bottom Line

One crucial difference between the two languages is that TypeScript is the superset of JavaScript while CoffeeScript is a language which is an enhanced version of JavaScript. Not just these two languages but there are other languages such as Dart, Kotlin, etc. which can be compiled into JavaScript. Choosing one language over the other solely depends on the purpose and functionality of the applications.

Provide your comments below

A Technical Journalist who loves writing about Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. A lover of music, writing and learning something out of the box. Contact: ambika.choudhury@analyticsindiamag.com